Bob Eddy: Yes, hey Pete, good morning. Thanks for the question. I’ll just kick it off and Bill can fill it. We have had a great year this year from a new club perspective. We’ve got seven in the bank already. We open hopefully tomorrow in Wayne, New Jersey – we talked about that on the prepared section of the call, and we’ve got a few more before the end of the year to meet our target. Our pipeline is very healthy at this point. We feel like we’re going in the right direction, and all the clubs we’ve opened in the last few years have outperformed what we thought they would do, so that gives us a ton of confidence to continue to keep our foot on the gas from a real estate perspective. We’ve invested behind the capability to move this quickly.
As you know, we didn’t do that in the past. That has borne some great openings of late and building a team that is dedicated to making sure those new buildings open on time and in great condition, and looking forward to continuing unit growth. I’ll let Bill talk about economics and some of the other points that you asked about.
Bill Werner: Yes, hey Peter, it’s Bill. In terms of the new versus existing markets, right, as you look at our growth this year, you’ve seen continued expansion in the midwest with the build-out of Pittsburgh, of Detroit, the push down in Ohio into Columbus, the entry into Indiana for the first time with our club in Noblesville, which is off to an amazing start. The balance this year is about 50/50; as we look at next year, it will be similar in terms of new and existing markets. In terms of performance within the existing markets, it’s been extremely strong. As we look back on the openings in clubs like Commack, on Long Island, Long Island City and Newburgh, New York, where we’ve added density, where we have a strong membership base to begin with, we see really great member behavior in those clubs where not only are they shopping the new clubs, but for the legacy members that were in those trade areas, they’re also shopping at the legacy clubs as well as the new clubs.
We’ve seen really strong incrementality in that performance in the existing markets at levels that we haven’t seen in the past, and that’s really positive as we think about building out our existing networks into the future. In terms of the investments, it’s certainly something that we’re looking at. We expanded our perishable distribution facilities last year with an opening of a facility in Kentucky. We’re looking forward at the build-out of the dry network as we go forward. If you remember when we went public, we talked about the ability for our distribution network to support about 100 incremental clubs, and lo and behold as we’ve done a 30 stack comp over the last three years, we’ve used a lot of that capacity pretty quickly, which is a great problem to have.
The dry side is certainly something that we’re looking at going forward. I’d be reluctant not to mention the in-sourcing of our Burris acquisition this year. The perishable facilities, bringing them in-house gives us great capabilities as we continue to grow our network here forward, so we feel good about the pipeline for next year. We’re working now actively on calendar years ’24 and ’25, and we feel good about the results and what we’re seeing.
Peter Benedict: That’s super helpful, thanks. Just a quick follow-up, just on the general merchandise business. You guys have made some investments in there in personnel. Maybe just a quick update on what the plan is in terms of trying to drive improved execution in that area over the next couple of years. Thank you.
